Trauma services

UCHealth’s expanding network of high-level trauma centers provides the highest level of comprehensive trauma, acute care surgery and surgical critical care services.

What are trauma centers?

Trauma centers coordinate care and protocols with community dispatch centers and EMS agencies, throughout all phases of care.

Tertiary trauma centers

Hospitals designated as Level I or II trauma centers are “tertiary” centers and offer a full complement of specialties and services.

Tertiary trauma centers serve as “receiving” hospitals for smaller or rural hospitals needing specialized care or services, and they provide care for nearly all types of injured patients. Level I centers have an added commitment to trauma research and education.

Level I trauma centers

  • Medical Center of the Rockies
  • Memorial Hospital Central
  • University of Colorado Hospital

Community trauma centers

Trauma centers designated as Level III and Level IV centers serve their communities through their ability to manage patients sustaining minor to moderate injury. Critically injured patients are transferred to tertiary trauma centers or other specialty centers such as a pediatric or burn center.

Level III trauma centers

  • Greeley Hospital
  • Highlands Ranch Hospital
  • Longs Peak Hospital
  • Memorial Hospital North
  • Poudre Valley Hospital
  • Yampa Valley Medical Center

Level IV trauma centers

  • Grandview Hospital
  • Pikes Peak Regional Hospital

More than an emergency room

Hospitals that have made the commitment to become a trauma center have demonstrated a system-wide responsibility to the care of the injured person. This includes dedicated specialists and services.

Trauma centers coordinate care and protocols with community dispatch centers and EMS agencies and continue to do so throughout all phases of care, including emergency and operating rooms, critical, convalescent, and rehabilitation care.

In addition, trauma centers have robust performance improvement, education and injury prevention programs that address all aspects of trauma care.

surgeons pointing out to something

Specialty care and services at all UCHealth tertiary trauma centers include:

  • Critical care-trained trauma surgeons who are immediately available.
  • Emergency physicians.
  • In-house anesthesia physicians.
  • Immediate access to radiologists.
  • Trauma-trained orthopedic surgeons.
  • Neurosurgeons.
  • Facial surgeons.
  • Medical specialties include critical care pulmonologists, internal medicine, cardiology, nephrology and infection control, in addition to several others.

What is acute care surgery?

Acute care surgery is a discipline of surgery that includes trauma care, emergency general surgery and surgical critical care. For ease of interpretation and to distinguish between trauma care, we refer to emergency general surgery as acute care surgery. This surgical discipline treats patients with sudden onset of disease affecting, for example, the bowel or gallbladder that requires emergency surgery.

All trauma surgeons within UCHealth manage acute care surgery patients in addition to trauma patients.